L
lemondiesel
Guest
My only advice for you is the practice of meditation. If you do not practice this, I can not explain. You have to experience in order to relate.
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Moonstruck888
Guest
Being a new age type with tendencies towards Crowleyanity, Wiccanism and hippy dippy stuff, I have practiced meditation. Tell me what you mean, if you will?
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KindredSoul
Guest
Mockery of a belief does not make the belief false. It’s been explained to you why the Creator of Physics themselves shouldn’t be presumed to be restricted to them: If they had already restricted Him to begin with, He wouldn’t be the maker of them (since they would have pre-existed His act of creation). You have not refuted that. Your resorting to mockery does not further your case at all.
Considering I haven’t said that at all, this is quite the ridiculous strawman you’ve drawn up.
Blessings in Christ,
KindredSoul
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Moonstruck888
Guest
Agreed… Nor does blind adherence to it make it true. However, I am not mocking your belief. It is the claim to knowledge I have an issue with.
You’ve explained why. What I’m interested in is how.
Personally, if I was making a claim to knowledge, I would make sure I could explain how my claim works. Without that explanation of how God can duck the laws of physics, the claim to knowledge amounts to an argument from sheer will. You believe it because you have a deep seated want or need to believe it…
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lemondiesel
Guest
Have you experienced astral projection?
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Moonstruck888
Guest
With the aid of Lysergic Acid Diethylamide, yes, I believe so… It was a very profound spiritual experience, but I don’t see any evidence that the experience could occur without my living brain.
It’s very hard to explain what the sensation was like. I don’t know if I can… The feeling of free floating motion was accompanied by a profound ecstasy, not quite like anything I’ve ever experienced before or since… Part of it was almost like being in love, profoundly connected to everything else…
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KindredSoul
Guest
Glad you know that, because I’ve never argued that.
Sorry, but just because you don’t appear to be convinced that there is a God doesn’t mean I’m not totally convinced, and you appear to completely overlook that possibility when you attack people for claiming knowledge of anything you don’t agree with. Your reasons for why you believe there is some other possibility make no more sense to me than if you were saying red was blue–no, I’m not insulting you, but we are clearly drawing totally different conclusions from the same reality. When I look out at the Universe, I see absolutely no other possibility than that there is a Creator, and I find it quite safe and logical to say “I know” that the only possibility I see is true–by definition, the only possibility must be true; whether you agree that it’s the only possibility or not is irrelevant to whether or not I should think I know something, as long as I am convinced that it is. I am prepared to believe that you are convinced of something different than I, but as long as I am not in agreement with you I’m not going to lie just so that you won’t have an issue with me.
And I do not find that necessary for anything more than curiosity, anymore than I would demand to know exactly how physics work before I believe they do.
That’s a non-sequiter, based on the false premise that you cannot be confident that something happened, no matter what reason you have to believe it did, unless you know how it happened. Until the scientific explosion of the last couple of hundred years, that would mean that most people would have been illogical for believing much of anything at all.
Blessings in Christ,
KindredSoul
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Moonstruck888
Guest
I never said you did.
I hold myself up to the same standard. It’s not an attack as such, I have to poke at your belief to understand what makes it tick. It’s nothing personal.
Agreed… By the way, I don’t have an issue with you. You seem like a genuinely decent and likeable man to me. Please don’t take what I say personally, I am here for good debate, curiosity and to learn, that’s all. I respect your belief, even if I don’t share it…
For me, that’s the truth. Without knowledge I can have no confidence in any claim. That’s just the way I am, a born again skeptic…
L
lemondiesel
Guest
Which was my exact same thought as well.
Personally, LCD is very mild when it comes to trying to experience astral projection. DMT is the more efficient way to go.
However, drugs should not be used to achieve because then you can not distinguish if you are just ‘trippn face’ or if its really happening to you.
Meditation alone, without any sort of drugs, is the best way to experience astral projection, because its easier to realize you are on a different plane of existence.
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Moonstruck888
Guest
The question is whether that different plane of existence is a function of the mind, or something else…
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lemondiesel
Guest
Once again, you are restating questions I have already had…
Like I said, I was once like you, which you can see by my first posts on this forum.
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Moonstruck888
Guest
I assume that now you do not believe that the experience is a function of the mind at large, but is caused by tapping in to something outside of ourselves?
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lemondiesel
Guest
“Tapping” into ourselves allows us to recall past experiences.
I would like to add to something to this thread.
Lets use the Ontological Argument to explain the possibility of a “God.”
I read so much of Jonathan Millers teachings, and even though he is Atheist, he said this is the most magnificent argument he has ever heard to argue the existence of God.
The definition of God, entails that God exists. Now lets use one of the definitions to explain God.
“The most perfect/powerful conceivable being or idea”
Now suppose this all powerful/perfect being did not exist. Then, he would lack the attribute of existence. The attribute of existence is one of the perfections that makes a being powerful. Since the definition says, the most perfect being, then God must have the attribute of existence, so therefore God exists. Because to exist is being more perfect than not to exist.
Now compare this to the definition of a unicorn. Which is, a horse with a horn on its head. No where in this definition does it imply that unicorns exist, therefore we know unicorns do not exist.
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KindredSoul
Guest
Thank you.
Yeah, I hear you.
As for our differences on having to know “how” something works…I suppose that for me, the “how” of something, at least on a question like this when it could not serve any practical ends (if God exists, He is certainly not going to be “bottled” and manipulated, so knowing the “how” would not advance technology or anything like knowing the “how” of other things often does), is simply a curiosity satisfier more than a requirement for my believing in it. I only have to know why I believe in it (whatever the reason may be, as long as it satisfies me), and if it’s mysterious to me as to how it works, it still doesn’t change that I’m convinced, for whatever line of reasoning, that it’s true. An example would be that I believe in Gravity (I use this as a shorthand for the concept that what goes up tends to come down, not necessarily Newton’s specific theory, though I do believe in that) and would believe in it even if I had not even the slightest clue as to the “how”–i.e., what makes it “tick”. I believe in Gravity because I see it at work in an obvious manner, not because I know what makes it work. I believe in God for a different reason, but one that, to me personally, is just as compelling as if I saw Him empirically: After deductive reasoning from everything I do see and experience, the existence of a Creator is the only possibility I’m left with; all the arguments I’ve heard from others positing other possibilities just haven’t intellectually satisfied me that those possibilities are actually possible (even though I realize that others disagree with me). So I know why I believe in God (even to the point of confidence that I would apply the word “know” to), even if I don’t know how He works, just as I know why I believe in Gravity–and would even if I didn’t understand what made it tick.
Blessings in Christ,
KindredSoul
I
Ignatius
Guest
No, personhood is not limited to human beings. Intelligent, sentient extraterrestrial people would also be persons as are Spiritual beings.
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yppop
Guest
What attitude? I was just letting you know that you sent 89 other posts and ignored what I contend is the answer you were seeking.
The least you could have done was to glance at it, instead you responded with a rather elusive post. I am terribly hurt Moonstruck. You posed a question; I proposed an answer; you resorted to diversion. I can only assume that you are not interested in the answer because you obviously prefer fragmentary sloganeering and emotive debates, which is a reflection of the more general vapidity of all public discourse these days. What you have done by avoiding my challenge with your snarky response is to give credence to the following observation made by David B. Hart:
“A truly profound atheist is someone who has taken the trouble to understand, in its most sophisticated forms, the belief he or she rejects, and to understand the consequences of that rejection”
Apparently you do not rise to the level of a truly profound atheist as defined by Hart and that confirms another of my expectations:
I did not expect you to meet the challenge I laid out for you because in a previous discussion with you on the thread “Is Science Grounded in Faith?”, I challenged you to explain your statement: “The law of angular momentum and the law of conservation of mass energy are largely responsible for the matter we observe in the Universe” and you never answered that challenge.
As for your banal proclamation: “but you are no smarter than anyone else on this thread”, you could be right, but how would you know? On the other hand, your rapid advancement in a technical field is quite intimidating and I may have to concede that you ideed are smarterthan me. In that regard, perhaps you would explain how in your profile you describe yourself as a “technician”. Two days later in a post on another thread you wrote, “I am an engineer, and engineering is applied science.” And a mere 30 minute later on the same thread you wrote, “Well, we can debate whether my interpretation of the Standard Model is correct or not, but as one physicist to another, I’m sure you’ll agree that there is simply no way the Universe could have been created in seven days, six thousand years ago?”
Quite a feat, your transition fromTechnician to Engineer to Physicist in less than 3-days!! Perhaps you could tell me how you did that? There couldn’t be a little dissembling there, could there?
I am. And unlike the few posts I challenged you to read on my thread and you described with the amusing mixed metaphor “trawl through weighty tomes” I am only writing one book and it would not be a “tome”.
Anyway, I want to thank you for reminding me how much time I have wasted with persons like you, so I will get back to writing my book. However, since you are an amusing chap, I will honor you by adding you to my list of favorite Cacouacs with the honorary rank of Captain Moonbeam!.
Yppop.
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Moonstruck888
Guest
Not according to the English department at Princeton University.
I’m happy to go with their definition.
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JohnDamian
Guest
When talking theology or philosophy terminology takes on a different meaning
Ie; In Theology any of the hypostases / modes in the trinity are persons,
Ie; In Philosophy “person” may apply to any human or non-human who is selfconscious and able to think / reflect,
If I am correct, linguistically the word person is a descendant of the Latin words for a Mask designed to resonate the voice…
The context of a word does denote it’s meaning - if I say I love to my wife, it is different to when I say I love football, or I love tea…
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Moonstruck888
Guest
Actually, somebody else, probably you, asserted that I was “a mere Scotch technician”. I do have an extensive knowledge of physics and qualifications in the field of physics. My job is technical in nature. I’m not sure why you don’t see how it’s perfectly possible to be educated as a physicist and work in a technical field?
Incidentally, I’m in my early middle age. My career spans a little more than 3 days.
Not that my career is any business of yours. I find this line of attack, this vulgar, priggish snobbery, absolutely distasteful and contemptible on your part.
Awww!
I don’t have to answer the challenge on Angular momentum for you. It was already answered decades before I was born. Whenever any particle is created or annihilated, the net angular momentum must always be exactly equal to zero. It is angular momentum conservation and mass energy conservation that cause particles to exist.
To put this in a very simplistic way, each point in spacetime is potentially any particle at large, concentrate an appropriate amount of energy at an appropriate frequency and hence wavelength into a point in spacetime and the matter / antimatter couplet that corresponds will be created. For want of a better analogy, conservation laws make particles stay particles. Without them we would live in a universe of pure energy. There would be nothing.
Momentum is actually written into Einsteins famous equation on transmutation of mass / energy. E = mc^2 is a truncated version that assumes zero momentum.
Let E = energy, m = rest mass, c = light speed in a vacuum and p = momentum.
and the full equation is E^2 = m^2 * c4 + p^2 * c^2
Now, I have to work long days through the week. My leisure time is somewhat limited. If you want me to respond to everything you say, you have to break it down into bullet points for me. I simply don’t have time to answer everyone the way they possibly wish me to answer them, not even your majesty himself.
I shan’t be buying a copy.
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Moonstruck888
Guest
Ah yes, philosophy, the educational gateway into the fast food industry.When talking theology or philosophy terminology takes on a different meaning
Ie; In Theology any of the hypostases / modes in the trinity are persons,
Ie; In Philosophy “person” may apply to any human or non-human who is selfconscious and able to think / reflect,
If I am correct, linguistically the word person is a descendant of the Latin words for a Mask designed to resonate the voice…
The context of a word does denote it’s meaning - if I say I love to my wife, it is different to when I say I love football, or I love tea…
I’ll stick with my dictionary…
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